Borra Vineyards

Borra Vineyards is a small winery out of Lodi, CA. They produce some really good red wines as well as a few whites and what they call fusion wines. Fusion wines are when they take multiple wines and combine them to create a new one, think of it like a wine suiceide but instead of soda, wine.

I've had the pleasure of getting to know Markus at Borra Vineyards since I graduated from Brooks this past June. He has taught me a lot about wine and being that my family once upon a time grew grapes and has always been in the agriculture business I am naturally curious about it.

Recently, Borra Vineyards hired me to do a basic product photo shoot of there bottles on a simple white background. Their labels are very unique my favorite wine of theirs is their Barbera. It's a red wine that to me is similar to a cabernet to me because it taste good and its not over powering like some merlots can be.

The bottle below is a syrah wine, another one of my favorites.

I am a firm believer is supporting locally grown products, especially with living in California and being in a family that are farmers.

Family Photo Restoration

I hope everyone had a Happy Holidays. One thing that I really like about the holidays is getting everyone together to hang out and enjoy time with one another to eat, give thanks, watch football and just have a good time. As I have done in a few of my prior post I am starting on restoring some of my old family photos for my grandma and mom, it's something I take great pride in doing

It's pretty interesting to me to see old family photos, especially ones that are of people that you may never have met before because they may have passed away before you where born or just live on the other side of the world. The later of the two is the case with me and this image. The short little girl in this image is my mom and the lady in the white in the back is my grandmother. Those are the only two in this image that I have met before. The two men in the image are my grandmothers brothers and they live in Oaklahoma and Michigan respectfully. I'm not sure exactly who the other two women are in this image but I could probably assume one was my great grandmother. If I have met them, I was in diapers and thus dont remember. I'm also intrigued on the location selection chosen for this photo to be taken: in a corner near a piano.

Before

After

1000

My new business cards that I had made just came in ! 1000 of them hot off the press. I was excited to find a place that was local that had some very good prices especially for having 1000 made on an offset press. Riverbank Printing is where I go them made and unfortunately they do not have a web site.

holiday season

I'm sorry I havn't posted in a while I've been consumed by the holidays and trying to get my Junk yard series of images into an art gallery. I do have some images that I took for Borra Vineyards that I will be posting soon as well as some old family photos that I have restored.

2010 is going to be epic. My goal is to get my photography into an art gallery. Some where, I don't really care where as long as people can see my vision. Maybe Modesto? Sacramento? LA? Pasadena? Only time will tell.

I would like to also announce that before the end of the year I will have a new web site launched to replace my current one. (same address new design)

He's gonna be a heartbreaker ...

Did a photo shoot the other day of my friend Niccole's son John. He's going to be a heart breaker for sure when he gets older.

Wineo

The other day I shot some more bottles of wine. This time it was for a smaller company, out of Lodi, CA. Borra Vineyards isn't a high volume company but what they lack in massive producing they more than make up for it in taste.

Here's a little taste of what I shot. This is a raw, undedited screen grab. More images will be coming soon.

New stuff ...

I have been working on some new designs lately not only for my new web site that I am still working on but some new business cards to match my site. Here is a little sneak peak of whats to come in the near future.

Front of Business card

Back of Business Card

New Web Site Design

Tell me what you think. Be honest, I can take it.

Meet the Dimas Family

I've been fortunate enough to know Brittney (purple outfit) since I was 5 years old. We grew up together. Went to school together from kindergarden all the way through high school. I'm very blessed to have friends like her that I have known for the majority of my life. Her mom, Sheila approached me about doing a family photo shoot and this is some of my favorites from the shoot.

The cute little boys name is John and there will be more photos coming of him soon.

Morris Show

Mr Morris E. Smith. Host of the Morris Show on channel 23.

Turkey Day

Family, Food and Football. Can this day get any better?


Happy Thanksgiving everyone !



P.S. On monday evening I will be on the Morris Show making my second appearance. Monday at 5:30 on channel 23 (comcast and charter cable)

Role Reversal

Today I had my buddy Spencer come over and take some portraits of me for my new web site that I will be launching soon. Heres some of my favorite images from the shoot. 

(photos taken by Spencer Rice, edited by Me.)

My TV Debut.

What does a banjo player, hypnotherapists, a christian singer and I have in common? We were all on the Morris Show last night. The Morris Show? It's a public access show that spotlights up and coming people around my community. Now this wasn't an Harpo productions or Dr Phil or anything, the show aired on a public access channel. Morris and I are going to do a few photo shoots some time between yesterday and my next appearance. Here are a few photos from the show. Hopefully I will have a video to post by the end of the week.

Morris and I

Morris and I and part of the banjo player

November 6, 2009

In June of this year I started working on a project that is really important to me and my family and that is restoring old images and making them look as if nothing had happened to them. Here is the first one of the series.


Before



After ... a little contrasty but I love it.


There will definitely be more to come in the future. I am teaching a class at my local junior college on photo restoration in 2010 that I am really excited about because I think that it will sharpen my photoshop skills as well as giving me more teaching experience as well.

November 3, 2009

Here are some more image that I really liked that I took of Monika and Heath.

Oct 24th, 2009

What a week. I made the voyage from Modesto to Santa Barbara to hang out with some friends that i miss and love so much. I was couch surfin' on my Zach's couch. Had a pretty productive few days: calibrated my computer screen, scanned old family photos and saw a bunch of friends and eventually drove down to LA to hang out with Justin. Saw his and Ada's new apartment which was totally decked out with the latest and greatest Ikea furniture. After we ate dinner, Justin, ada and I went out to dinner at a Japanese restaurant that I can't remember the name of. It was really good though.

After dinner we headed to the main event of the night. Kyle's art gallery show. I've been friends with kyle since I started back at Brooks Institute in 2006. His photography style is off the hook. He sees things from such a completely different perspective that the things that he creates are truly amazing. I'm blessed to not only call him a fellow photographer but a really good friend.

At the show there were something like 25 photographers in the show. There were all different types of styles and subjects that everyone photographed. This guy did a panoramic of the Effel Tower. Thats some crazy matte board cutting skills to go around the image.

This was my favorite piece that kyle had in the show. 

It crazy how within a year things have changed so much. I remember when all of us where in school together it was hard to not find at least two of us hanging out and now we are all spread out. Erin and Darin living in Florida. Rachel and Lily living in Michigan. I'm in Modesto. Zachs in Santa Barbara. Julianne is in San Diego. Kyle, Derek and Justin are in Pasadena. 

ok so maybe that was a little more info than you needed but my point is that we all come from different places to support each other. I am truly blessed. 

mr kyle wong.


Zach


Julianne, Kyle and Justin


Family

Monika and Heath

Anything worth doing is based off of love. If its marriage, a career, friendships, etc. I have been really blessed to have had a core of friends that I have known for the majority of my life as well as others who I have met along the journey that we call life.

A few days ago I got the great pleasure to photograph a life long friend's adorable baby boy, Heath. To put how long I have known Monika, lets just say that we say we have known each other since the first grade. Now I'm a college graduate, she went off to the air force and found the love of her life and now has Heath. Isn't if funny how life works some times ?

So a few days ago I met Monika for lunch and then came over to my place for a little photo shoot of Heath. I wish I could have gotten a chance sooner to do this because Heath is now 6 months old so he was trying to crawl all over the place. To make life a little easier, I placed my bed near my window in my room and just let Heath be Heath. We gave him a few things to play with to be entertained by. The kid is going to be a baseball player some day. He was all over the baseball and was just as happy as could be.  Here is a few of my favorite images taken on that day. 

October 5th, 2009

You know its been a long time since you last posted when it takes you three times to come up with the proper password to log in. With that said, it has been a long times since I last posted something. Over a month I believe. Long time, thats like an eternity if kyle did that. 

For right now, I am back in Modesto after graduating from Brooks Institute this past June. At first, I wasn't shooting at all because I was preparing myself for my classes that I was teaching as well as doing some hardcore marketing to get my name out there.

Well, some of my marketing has paid off and I recently did a photo shoot for a winery out of Madera, CA called Mariposa Wine Company. They are a small winery trying to hang with the big boys like Gallo and Beringer. Apparently, my timing was on point with them because when I sent them a cold email they got back to me really fast and begun discussing what they wanted to do. 

The shoot was really fun and easy going just how I like things to go.

Just a little FYI, I am also working on redoing my web site. I hope that I'll have it launched soon, thats all for now.

Ryan

It's been a while ...

Since I last made a blog post. Lately I've been doing some wine tasting. Its a new experience for me and I am actually starting to like it. I was doing some thinking one day and needed to come up with a strategy for what I wanted to do with my photography as far as marketing goes and I came up with marketing towards wineries. Upon doing my research, I found that there are a ton of wineries within an hr and a half drive each way of my home town. Last week I made my first wine tasting experience at a winery called Borra Vineyards. They are a very small winery compared to some of the big dogs like Gallo, Beringer and McWilliams. But nonetheless make some really good wine. I learned that within the Lodi area, the wineries mainly make Red Wines like merlot, Barbara and cabernet sauvignon due to the climate. Anyways, here are some photos I took both at the winery and after I bought some wine to photograph because I was bored


Tons of barrels of wine maturing before they get bottled. Most of the wine in these barrels are from 2007.


mmm grapes


This is Markus, he is the assistant Winemaker and he gave me a tour of the facility.


This is Bruce, He told me all about Borra Vineyards wine in the tasting room.
.

This was one of my favorite types of wines that Borra Vineyards produces, Barbera


Some other wine I bought from Bev-Mo. Beringer Moscato


and a Calloway Cabernet Sauvignon


Thats all I got for now though.